Songoftheday 11/27/21 - I know that every morning you go thumbing through the personal want ads, you grab the latest copy a cup of coffee and settle in for a good laugh...

 

 

"Single White Female" - Chely Wright

from the album Single White Female (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 4

 

Today's song comes from Chely Wright, who grew up in Kansas as Richell Wright, before starting her country music career in Branson, Missouri before moving to Nashville to work for the tourist attraction Opryland USA. Signing with Polygram/Mercury Records' Polygram division in the early 1990s, Wright released her debut album Woman On The Moon in 1994. Her first single "He's A Good Ole Boy" was her first placing at #58 on Billboard magazine's Country Singles Chart. Two more singles from the album were also minor country radio hits, and Chely won the CMA Top New Female Vocalist award. Chely's sophomore effort, Right In The Middle Of It, also spun off a couple of minor country hits, with second try "The Love That We Lost" just missing the country top-40 at #41 in 1996. At this point Wright and Polydor parted ways. 

Chely moved on to join up with MCA Records, where she finally started to find bigger rewards for her talents. Her first album with the label, Let Me In, became her first to appear on Billboard 200 sales tally at #171 and on the Country Albums list at #25. The lead single from the set, "Shut Up And Drive", landed at #14 on the Country Singles chart, and "bubbled under" the crossover "pop" Hot 100 list at #112 in 1997. All three of the records single reached the country top-40, and at last Wright's momentum was there.

Wright's second release on the label, Single White Female, came out in the spring of 1999. The title track, written by Carolyn Dawn Johnson and Shaye Smith, was a sassy, rock-inflected song about a woman who sees a guy perusing the personal ads in the newspaper (remember those?) and being too shy to make the first move herself. So instead she basically sings it to him...

"Single White Female" became the biggest hit of Wright's career, spending a week on Billboard's Country Singles chart, and crossing over to make the top-40 on the Hot 100 in August of 1999. Internationally, the song also climbed to #1 on the Canadian Country chart. The Single White Female album, released in May of that year, peaked at #124 on the Billboard 200 and #15 on the Country Albums distillation, going on to sell over a half million copies. 

Chely's follow-up single, "It Was", just missed the Country top ten, stopping at #11, while getting to #64 on the Hot 100 (her most recent placing there). It's my favorite of hers. Lastly, "She Went Out For Cigarettes" was a minor country radio hit at #49. 

Wright returned in 2001 with Never Love You Enough, which became her highest-charting album on the Billboard 200 at #62 while hitting the top ten on the Country Albums list at #4. Two tracks from the set made the top-40 on the Country Singles chart, with "Jezebel" doing the best at #23 (also a favorite). Chely left MCA and started her own label Painted Red, and in 2004 put out an EP Everything, which landed a top-40 country hit with "Back Of The Bottom Drawer" at #40. After switching distribution of Painted Red to Dualtone Records, she released The Metropolitan Hotel the following year. From the set the unexpectedly jingoistic song "Bumper Of My SUV" scored Wright her most recent country radio hit to date, peaking at #35. The album also made the top half of the Billboard 200 at #96.

During the five year break she took after Metropolitan Hotel, Wright came out of the closet as a lesbian, and wrote a book about her life called Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer. Chely signed her label to be distributed by EMI Records, back to the majors. The result, Lifted Off The Ground, was critically acclaimed, but spent a single week at #200 on the Billboard 200 in 2010. That was followed by I Am The Rain in 2016, which is her most recent to make the Billboard 200 at #181. 

Since then Wright has released two more extended plays (or EPs) on the Painted Red label, the Christmas set Santa Will Find You in 2018 and Revival a year later. She's been a big voice in the LGBTQ music scene, as well as the queer community as a whole. 

(6/10)

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Here's Chely performing the song on the Crook & Chase talk show on the Nashville Network in 1999. She had her band member Joe Don Rooney and Jay Demarcus with her - they would soon go on to become 2/3's of the group Rascal Flatts, which will be making my series many times...

Next up, at Capital Pride in Washington DC in 2010...

And lastly, at Ty Herndon's Concert for Love and Acceptence in 2019...

 Up tomorrow: This R&B trio is not feeling themselves.